NORTH COUNTY — Ten years ago today, a fire that beganinauspiciously at the intersection of Harmony Grove and ElfinForest roads on the western edge of Escondido burned its way towardthe coast and through the lives of many North County residents.
The Harmony fire, as it was named by the Harmony Grove FireDepartment, in 24 hours consumed 8,600 acres, or four square miles,and 100 homes. It killed one man who was trapped in his car, andleft area residents with an indelible feeling of vulnerability.
Stoked by Santa Ana winds on that hot October afternoon, thefast-moving flames and clouds of black smoke billowed westward,painting the sky red and casting a smoky pall over the region.
The flames quickly consumed dry, brittle brush along with homesin the hilly areas of Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove, and withinhours had crossed over the Cerra de las Posas ridgeline to thenorth and hopped across Rancho Santa Fe Road to the southeast.
Today, nearly all of the homes that were destroyed have beenrebuilt. But the fire stands as a benchmark for a region that atthe time had never faced such devastation.
As a result of the Harmony fire, cities such as Carlsbad and SanMarcos ed stricter fire codes for new construction. As well,county officials have widened surface streets for emergency accessand invested money in infrastructure and emergencycommunications.
And with much of the area that burned now densely populated,such as parts of Carlsbad and the San Elijo Hills area in SanMarcos, they say the region is better equipped today to prevent asimilar catastrophe.
“As the city has continued to develop, the infrastructure hasprogressed incredibly,” said San Marcos fire Chief Todd Newman.
The widening of Mission Road, San Marcos Boulevard and RanchoSanta Fe allows emergency vehicles better access and provides moreevacuation routes for residents, he said. And soon, San Marcos willhave a fourth fire station at the top of San Elijo Hills, whereTwin Oaks Valley Road will be connected in March to San ElijoRoad.
The beginning
The Harmony fire started at 2 p.m. Monday, Oct. 21, 1996.Designated “suspicious,” the source of the fire has never beendetermined. Within an hour it engulfed the rural community of ElfinForest and marched in a westward wall towards Encinitas, Carlsbadand northwest to Lake San Marcos.
It blazed through the rugged, then-undeveloped areas south ofthe Cerra de las Posas ridgeline in San Marcos, topped theridgeline and burned north into residential areas. It crossedRancho Santa Fe Road to burn subdivisions in Carlsbad andEncinitas.
Police and fire officials evacuated as many as 3,000 people –first from Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove and by 6 p.m., when thefire jumped Box Canyon and burned into La Costa, residents ofCarlsbad were told to leave their homes.
Evacuees clogged Rancho Santa Fe Road and took shelter at SanMarcos High School, which itself was evacuated to San Marcos JuniorHigh School. Other shelters were set up at Corky Smith Gymnasium,San Dieguito Academy, Rancho Santa Fe Middle School and Stage CoachPark.
And while more than 650 firefighters descended on the blaze,they were hampered by Santa Ana wind gusts as high as 45 mph thatgrounded air tankers. As well, other fires burning in the LosAngeles area at the time diverted state resources requested byNorth County fire officials.
Stricter standards
By Monday night, the fire had destroyed 31 homes in the ElfinForest area, and 61 homes in Carlsbad including six apartments and30 houses in the La Costa neighborhood that borders Box Canyon, adeep ravine of protected wild land habitat.
Four homes were lost in the Discovery Hills neighborhood of SanMarcos, which borders the east side of Lake San Marcos, and fourhomes burned in Encinitas, according to the County’s Office ofEmergency Services.
Reports over the years have cited up to 120 homes destroyed,which may be attributed to fires burning north of San Diego.
“There was a lot of confusion,” said John Lachman, of the Officeof Emergency Services. “There was more than just the Harmony Grovefire.”
Many homes were victims of burning embers — some reported asfar away as Interstate 5 — that landed on wooden shake-shingleroofs or in attic vents and eaves.
Today, fire codes in developed areas that abut wild land inunincorporated parts of the county and in cities such as Carlsbadand San Marcos, require non-combustible materials for new homeconstruction and renovations.
Roof tiles must be asphalt, concrete or slate. Exposed wallsurfaces, attic eaves and patio decks must be covered bynon-combustible materials such as stucco. And vegetation within a100-foot to 150-foot radius of a home must be trimmed andmaintained.
Each city has its own fire prevention ordinances, and the countyDepartment of Planning and Land Use regulates unincorporatedareas.
“We don’t really allow shake shingles anywhere,” said Newman.”If we were dealing with a developer who wanted to build next tothe wild land area, the homes would require boxed eaves withstucco, fire-resistant materials, dual-paned windows — those typesof things we’d be looking for.”
In Carlsbad, for example, all roof shingles must be made ofnon-combustible material, said building Inspector Pat Kelly.
“When they come in for a roof permit from the city, they have tochoose another product (from shake) that’s non-combustible,” saidKelly. “There are plenty to choose, like tile, or asphaltfiberglass singles, which are non-combustible.”
In urban wild land interface zones, Carlsbad’s fire marshaldetermines the risk factor and requirements for parcels.
“We changed the standards for how buildings get built in thoseinterface zones,” he said.
And in county areas, a fire code ed in 2001 and laterupdated in 2004 after the Cedar and Paradise fires, requires a100-foot perimeter of clearing around homes in the wild landinterface area, as well as being built with non-combustiblematerials, said senior structural engineer Clay Westling.
“We divided up areas into basic and enhanced as far asfire-resistant construction requirements,” he said. “It used to bethat if you had 100 feet of fuel modification, you didn’t have tohave fire-resistant construction. Now even with fuel modification,there are some basic things that you have to have.”
More people
About half of the acreage burned in the Harmony fire was insouthern San Marcos, which was then largely overgrown, drychaparral. Today, that area is called San Elijo Hills and is hometo 5,400 people and growing.
Developers have graded more than 1,000 acres and covered themwith streets, condominiums, row houses and dense subdivisions.
Ironically, San Elijo Hills, like many master-plannedcommunities, was built as a fire break, and may aid in fireprevention, said Newman.
Water mains to serve the development also give firefightersaccess to 7.5 million gallons of water reserve and “hundreds” offire hydrants in an area that otherwise would be fire fodder, saidSan Elijo project manager Curt Noland.
Developers of San Elijo Hills have deliberately added non-nativevegetation with more water irrigation as a fire buffer.
“Whereas before you had just unlimited, unbroken nativevegetation from Elfin Forest all the way to San Marcos proper, younow have a master-planned community in the way,” Noland said.
“San Elijo acts to a degree as a fire break between the southernboundary of (the) city of San Marcos to the rest of the city,”Noland said.
Westling, the senior engineer with the county Office of Planningand Land Use, said that point is debatable. But, he added, ahousing community surrounded by a clearing of fire buffers andbuilt with new construction is more fire resistant “than a bunch ofhomes in and amidst (dry brush).”
“If a new development is built according to new codes withproper fire breaks, fuel modifications and construction materials,that development will form a fire break for older developments onthe other side of it,” Westling said.
Clearing brush
Many of the homes that burned, even in the dense neighborhoodsof La Costa, were built in the 1950s and ’60s with woodenshake-shingle rooftops and wooden siding, or they were right upagainst the native chaparral vegetation.
The response in many cases has been to completely clear out thechaparral, which may save an immediate structure, but can also dolong-term damage to the area’s ecosystem and water sheds, accordingto one local chaparral expert.
“People have a tendency to think that native vegetation is theenemy,” said Rick Halsey, director of the Chaparral Institute inEscondido. “It’s not.”
The increasing number of urban-style developments such as SanElijo, coupled with ordinances that call for clearing away nativevegetation, is depleting native chaparral which is giving way tograssy weeds that are even more flammable, he said.
“The grass is much more flammable than the chaparral,” he said,adding that the thinned chaparral is being overwhelmed by theincreasing number of fires.
“When you replace the native landscaping with concrete andhouses that are right up against the wild lands, you have a firethat burns off whatever is left,” he said.
The long-term result is still unclear, but Halsey said heworries it will lead to flooding and drainage problems.
“When you have plants that are adapted to a particular climateand environment, they allow for a natural flow of water intosystems. Removing them causes massive flooding, run-off, andserious drainage and pollution problems,” Halsey said.
Building homes next to wild lands creates risk for anotherreason — firefighters can’t do perimeter control because they’retrying to protect a growing number of houses, he said.
“It prevents firefighters from managing fire itself,” hesaid.
Prevention
Generally, firefighters try to get ahead of a fire byanticipating its pathway and managing it, said Nona Barker, who isa volunteer at the Elfin Forest Fire Department.
“There’s never enough firefighters to put out all the fires.What happens now is because we have so many homes and so manypeople, we’re trying to put a truck at every house and trying tosave that house,” said Barker, who is organizing eventscommemorating the blaze this month at the fire station on ElfinForest Boulevard.
She said some residents are still traumatized by what happened10 years ago. But those who are new to the area have to be educatedin fire prevention.
“It’s not a question of if it will happen again, but when,” shesaid.
Barker also acknowledged the San Elijo fire break. Open fieldsby the elementary school there could be utilized as a safety zonefor residents, she said.
But, she added, “it will be scary over there when a fire comesthrough again.”
“Homes really are well built now. In the future, I think theywill be better built,” she said. “We know that anything will burnin an oven, but you try to make them as oven safe as possible.”
Barker was one of the first responders to the Harmony fire, andre the congested roads and panic of the residents of theElfin Forest community who were ordered to evacuate.
As the winds shifted and the fire jumped Elfin Forest Road,Barker said she violated her own rule and panicked at the thoughtof her 10-year-old son who was home alone.
Well-acquainted with basic rules, her son packed a bag, closedthe blinds and filled the water bowls of their animals. He waspicked up by the fire chief’s 16-year-old son, who had justreceived his driver’s license, Barker said.
“You teach them what to do. While he was waiting and figuringout this would get pretty bad, he had covered the haystack up,closed interior doors of the house, shut the wood blinds,” shesaid. “He got my pack, which is my purse.”
He also took a picture off the wall of him and his mother justafter he was born, Barker said.
“He had it with him in the pack. He also took his baseballcards,” she said.
Looking forward
While the roads have improved, Barker notes that there are manymore people living in the area, which could cause the same kind ofpanic if they ever have to evacuate again.
“The big issue for all of San Diego County is the roads and thenumber of people on the roads trying to escape,” she said. “I thinkit will be very scary. And my hope is that an orderly evacuationwould happen.”
Westling notes that many of today’s changes in buildingstandards and road improvements were in place three years ago whenthe Paradise and Cedar fires erupted in October 2003. The firesburned an area the size of Rhode Island, destroyed 2,400 homes, andkilled 24 people.
“Those fires proved that the (ordinance) works,” Westling said.”Most of the homes that burned were older and not built under thenew codes.”
Of the 15,000 homes that existed in the Paradise-Cedar firearea, 2,137 homes were destroyed, a loss rate of 14 percent,Westling said. Of all the homes, 400 were built under the strictercodes and only 17 of those were destroyed, a 4 percent loss rate,he said.
“That kind of shows that new homes did perform better,” hesaid.
staff writer Ned Randolph at (760) 761-4411 or[email protected].
Response from the community
Saving the animals
Elfin Forest resident Jeff Trejo, 31, said his family turnedtheir home into a virtual animal shelter after rescuing horses,dogs and cats from neighbors’ homes.
“The roads were blocked off, so a lot of people couldn’tevacuate themselves,” said Trejo, whose family’s home is off ElfinGlen, where Elfin Forest meets Harmony Grove. “Once we noticed ourhouse was fine, we started to worry about our neighbors. We triedto evacuate as many animals as possible.”
Trejo said his family sheltered the animals for two days.
“We were fortunate because most of our close neighbors wereuntouched,” he said, although he knew many people affected by thefire, including his friend’s parents, whose house burned in LaCosta.
Concern for residents
“I was always watching the ridges to see if the fire would crossover to this side,” said Larry Carpenter, 53, as he sat recently atthe Old California Coffee Shop in San Marcos.
Carpenter said that while he was not close enough to the fire tobe concerned about his Vista home, he was concerned about thepeople who lived in the neighborhoods being affected by thefire.
Blaze ‘opened people’s eyes’
Escondido residents Bernie and Collette Trembly noted that theHarmony fire was the first fire in the immediate area to causesubstantial residential damage.
“I have a business on Rancho Santa Fe Road and what I most is how it appeared to be a random strike,” said BernieTrembly, as he spoke at a coffee house in San Marcos. “There’d be ahouse, and then nothing.”
Bernie Trembly said as a result of the fire, the couple replacedtheir wooden “shake” shingle roof.
“It really opened a lot of people’s eyes to the danger of shakeroofs,” he said. “I thought, ‘We better do something.'”
Collette Trembly recalled the extent of the fire’sdevastation.
“It’s amazing how quickly everything can disappear … how fastfire can travel since everything is dry around here,” she said.
Worst ever seen
Samuel Ethridge, 73, said he re the black smoke and redsky that day, as he watched from his home near Lake Hodges, off ViaRancho Parkway in Escondido.
“I was thinking, ‘By God, I’m glad the wind is not blowing backthis way,'” said Ethridge, who has lived in the area for 35 yearsand said the Harmony fire was one of the worst he’s ever seen.
As Ethridge browsed through goods outside Lowes in the CreeksideMarketplace in San Marcos recently, he recalled the ferocity of theSanta Ana winds and the number of roads that had to be blocked offbecause of the fire.
“It just kept burning,” he said. “The wind was blowing so fastand hard … it burned all the way toward the ocean.”
Fled with valuables
“It was pretty frightening,” said Joaquin Valdez, 32, who saidhe was living at home and attending Palomar College at the time ofthe fire. “You could see the smoke from behind the mountain. Thewhole ridgeline was on fire.”
Valdez recalls packing up his valuables, including photo albums,at 4 a.m. the night of the fire.
“My mother was flipping out, loading up all these boxes into ourcars,” he said. “We wanted to be prepared in case we had toevacuate to San Marcos High School.”
Valdez said a change in the wind helped spare the family’s homeon Poppy Road in Discovery Hills and they did not have toevacuate.
“It was amazing to see the amount of work firefighters actuallydo,” he said.
House still standing
Petra Jakawich, an Elfin Forest resident, said she and herfamily had just moved to the area from Indiana two months prior tothe fire.
While she lived through tornadoes and thunderstorms, Jakawichsaid she was terrified of her first wildfire experience.
“It almost felt like there was no place to hide,” said Jakawich,whose 13-year-old daughter, Brianna, nodded in agreement.
Brianna, who was 3 at the time, said she saw a plume of smokeout her window as she and friend were playing with a kitchenset.
“I told my mom right away,” she said.
Jakawich said it was fairly easy for her family to grab alltheir important papers and evacuate, since they had not fullyunpacked yet, but she had no idea where to go.
Just as she was out the door, Jakawich said her phone rang. Itwas the mother of one of her son’s friends from school, who invitedthe family to stay with them, even though they barely knew oneanother.
Jakawich said she and her husband returned the next day withoutthe kids to find that their house was still standing.
“It was very eerie,” said Jakawich. “Across the road it lookedlike the moon — it was grey with ashes and burnt stumpseverywhere. In the other direction, it looked as normal as couldbe.”
Scene called ‘scary’
Vista resident Shirley Broman, 47, had just moved to the areafrom Long Beach and recalls seeing the hills on fire in thedistance.
“To actually see the fire on the horizon was really scary,” saidBroman, as she sat outside the Starbucks on Knoll Road in SanMarcos.
– Compiled by Noelle Ibrahim, staff writer
